Though the cause of that crash is still under investigation, The
Times' Nicola Clark noted that the US has one of the worst rail
safety records in the developed world. The report linked that
fact to the lack of government spending.

"Fatality rates are almost twice as high as in the European Union
and countries like South Korea, and roughly triple the rate in
Australia," Clark wrote of the US. "Analysts say the impressive
safety record in Europe and Asia is the result of steady
government spending of billions of dollars on development and
maintenance of railroad infrastructure — including sophisticated
electronic monitoring and automated braking systems developed
over the past 20 years."

US lawmakers were heavily criticized for voting to cut Amtrak's
funding in the immediate aftermath of last
Tuesday's crash, which occurred on the route between
Philadelphia and New York City. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell (D) was
particularly vocal on the matter.

"Here, less than 12 hours after seven people died, these SOBs,
and that's all I can call them, these SOBs didn't even have the
decency to table the vote," he said on MSNBC. "What are these
guys smoking?"

For his part, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)
criticized a reporter who asked a question linking his
chamber's transportation funding vote to the crash. Boehner noted
that the train was reportedly going far beyond its speed limit at
the time of the crash — a factor that is seemingly unrelated to
funding levels.

"Are you really going to ask such a stupid question?" Boehner
said at a news conference last Thursday. "Obviously it's not
about funding. The train was going twice the speed limit."

However, The Times report looked at the funding other countries
gave their rail networks and noted that in "terms of safety, the
return on that investment has been clear." This includes foreign
networks where trains travel at far higher speeds than in the US.

"Japan's famous Shinkansen 'bullet train' network has never
experienced a fatal crash or derailment in 51 years of operation,
while in France the same can be said of its gleaming fleet of
high-speed TGVs, which have zipped across the French countryside
for close to three decades," Clark wrote. "Even in Spain and
China, the sites of two crashes in recent years where dozens were
killed, overall rail accident rates per number of passengers
remain among the lowest in the world."

According to the report, the US invests less than 0.1% of its GDP
on rail systems — a fraction of what a number of other developed
countries pay. As a result, US rail networks do not have the same
technology installed to improve the safety of their lines.

"Those improvements can automatically slow a train if a computer
on board detects that it has exceeded the maximum speed for a
given section of track," added.